1. Technical Field
The present disclosure pertains generally to the field of solutions utilizing the location of people or assets, more particularly, location information based at least in part on position information derived from radio frequency transmitters and associated with pre-configured zones or categories, and provided as a service for integration with smart device applications and enterprise software solutions.
The present disclosure relates further to the field of information security, more particularly to securing of asset association information through the obfuscation of radio frequency transmitter identification codes.
2. Brief Description
The present disclosure relates generally to a system for contextualized location aware content delivery comprising a group of beacons transmitting respective ID's, an application running on a smart device configured for receiving the beacons, determining signal amplitude, reception time, beacon ID, and sending ID and amplitude to a server over a network. The server determines location of the smart device and contextualizes the location based on a context location database with the server. Context information sent back to application. Application sends context information along with user action information to an application server over a network. Application server sends context related information to application for display to a user on said smart device. The server, application, and beacons may be provided as a service to a facility for use with customer's smart devices. A beacon ID security method is disclosed. Beacons may include precision location technology and relay information to one another and to the server.
The present disclosure further relates generally a system for providing secure access to the location of people or assets (including smart devices) derived from radio frequency transmitters associated with pre-configured zones or categories. The association of radio frequency transmitters with the preconfigured zones or categories may be stored in a library maintained on a smart device or on a system server. A smart device may be, for example but not limited to, a cell phone, or tablet computer, or other multifunction device.
The system maintains a library of asset location information that is utilized to provide users with valuable information about the asset by location association. For example, when the user is in proximity to the asset, information related to the asset is displayed on the smart device. The system operated as authorized by the store owner or manager is referred to as the authorized system or approved system utilizing the approved or authorized library. It is possible that a competitor may wish to utilize the beacons and generate a competing information service highlighting different products or giving different information. The competing service is referred to as the unauthorized or unapproved service using an unapproved or unauthorized library.
In one variation, construction of a non-public authorized library is obfuscated, i.e., made obscure, by changing publicly available properties of a radio frequency beacon at specified intervals according to a mathematical function known only to the system that maintains the approved library.
In one variation, the transmitters may be Bluetooth® and Bluetooth Smart® beacons whose properties, including identification and signal strength may be accessible by any Smart Device with Bluetooth® capabilities.
The present disclosure further relates generally to a system and method for enhancing enterprise software systems by providing the location of assets or people as an integrated service based at least in part on position information derived from radio frequency transmitters and associated with pre-configured zones or categories. In one variation, the transmitters may be Bluetooth® and Bluetooth Smart® beacons. The beacon information including identification and signal strength may be derived by observing the received beacon signal at a user terminal (for example, smart device). In one variation, the system derives proximity information of the user to the beacon and associated zones or categories at the deployment site (for example, products in a store). In another variation the system may derive a distance value from a beacon or may derive a two or three dimensional position value from the one or more beacons. The position information may then be contextualized by association with pre-configured location zones or categories used to enable the delivery of context specific information or the trigger of a context specific event. Examples of delivering context specific information may be the provision of retail product specials, e-coupons, surveys, or historical location to a user via a smart app. An example of triggering a context specific event may be the dispensing of a product or item, via a vending machine or mobile/fixed terminal, based on the proximity of a specific user's smart device, verified by the collected location information, to the said vending machine or mobile/fixed terminal. The user may be connected by a smart device application (app) through the location service to a local server or remote server in the cloud (internet) that maintains customer accounts including location history and preferences. The smart device's historic location information may be recorded with a time marker for future reference on either local or cloud based servers. For example a device's historic location and time marker can be used to identify what the user was doing at a specific location, when referenced to data relating to their actions performed at that corresponding time within an app on a smart device. One example of this could be the precise location of a user's smart device when they submitted a response to a survey question.
In a further variation, the beacon device may include receive and/or transceive capability in addition to beacon functionality. The transceive capability may be on the same or different network technology, For example the beacon may be Bluetooth®, whereas the network may be Bluetooth® or WiFi®. The beacons may relay information from beacon to beacon to from an interface to the Cloud server as desired.
3. Transceive Beacon
In a further variation, the beacon device and/or the mobile device may include transceive capability. The beacon device may transmit a beacon signal receivable by a mobile device as a one way transmission. The beacon device may also include receive and/or transceive capability to enable additional optional functionality. A beacon device with transceive capability may receive mobile signals and as a minimum gather statistics and usage data on mobile devices coming within proximal range to the beacon. With further capability, the transceive beacon may interact with the mobile device and potentially interact with the user via a user interface screen of an application program (ap) running on the mobile device. The beacon signal may be a short range signal, for example Bluetooth®. The mobile device may also include cell phone capability and may connect to a server using a cell phone network. Thus, the mobile device may detect and interact with the beacon using a first RF signal (e.g. Bluetooth®) and interact with a server using a second RF signal (cell phone, WiFi® or other). Beacon data, including historical usage data, may be conveyed to the server by a user system of opportunity that happens to interact with the beacon and also connect to the server. Alternatively, the beacons may be networked among themselves to connect through store installed equipment to the server and thus report usage statistics on a more reliable or regular basis.
In a further variation, the mobile device may be an anonymous device, for example, an RF transceiver installed on a shopping cart or hand basket. The RF transceiver may be a simple inconspicuous tag or may be a user terminal providing customer information and user interface capability.
The mobile transceiver may support the identified communication method (such as Bluetooth® low energy) and protocol (such as iBeacon®). The mobile transceiver may be associated with a user, either as an identified user (as in a shopper loyalty system), or with an anonymous user (e.g., shopping cart). The transceiver may preferably be able to work in an ad hoc networking fashion as it enters and exits the range of other transceivers. The transceiver may have a memory element adequate to store associations and timestamps of other transceivers within range, and may support the means of transferring database content to other nodes in the ad-hoc network.
The system of which the transceivers are a part may support association of a transceiver with a category (fixed beacon mode) or with a mobile person or asset. This may be considered a superset of category association, where categories could be based on elements associated with a fixed location, or categories that are individuals or other mobile assets.
One optional feature may be a means of upgrading or altering the firmware of the beacon device over the air, primarily for the purpose of updating supported protocols, and to change the function and parameters of the ad hoc network.
Another optional feature may be an ability of the transceiver to capture and forward the RSSI or other location enabling information from other nodes in the network. Thus, the server can gather the location enabling information from multiple devices at known locations and calculate a near realtime location of each transceiver. The location information could be used to determine a higher fidelity position as the transceiver transitions between categories, and to capture a higher precision path of the transceiver through the site.
The disclosure also describes related methods including:
A method for contextualized location related content delivery comprising:
providing at least one beacon configured for transmitting an identification; providing an application configured for being downloaded and for running on a smart device;
the application may be configured for utilizing said smart device to receive the at least one beacon, determine a reception amplitude, determine said identification, send said identification, and said amplitude information to a network server over a network; the network server receiving said identification information and said amplitude information from said application.
The network server determining proximity data based on said amplitude information;
The network server further comprising a context database relating proximity data to context data; and the network server utilizing said context database to determine context location information based on said proximity information. The network server communicating said context location information to said application over said network.
The application may to send the context location information to an application server and receive context related content based on the context location information from the application server for display on the smart device.